Werner Bonefeld s new book falls within the left German tradition

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Werner Bonefeld s new book falls within the left German tradition"

Transcription

1 Bonefeld on Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy Christian Lotz Werner Bonefeld. Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason. London: Bloomsbury Press, Pp $120.00, hardback. ISBN: Werner Bonefeld s new book falls within the left German tradition of critical theory that originated from Adorno s students in the 1970s, including Hans-Joachim Krahl, Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt. Now, their work is known as the new Marx reading, to which younger authors such as Michael Heinrich, Frank Engster, Moishe Postone and Ingo Elbe contribute. In contrast to the official (post-) Habermasian version of critical theory, and despite all internal differences, this school reconnects critical theory to political economy and pushes critical theory back to its original impulses. 1 In addition, money and monetary considerations are central for the new Marx reading, which includes a rejection of Marxist theory as a primarily economic theory. In contradistinction to most scholars who are loosely connected to the new Marx reading, Bonefeld argues that critical theory as a critique of political economy can only be understood coherently if it keeps the concepts of class and class struggle at its center. Though money does not seem to be the key concept for Bonefeld, he 1. Bonefeld s attempt to reestablish critical theory on Marxian grounds and his choice of central topics, such as time and real abstraction, shows an astonishing overlap with my own attempt to push critical theory back to a critique of political economy. For this, see Christian Lotz, The Capitalist Schema: Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). Radical Philosophy Review Volume 18, number 2 (2015): DOI: /radphilrev

2 338 Christian Lotz does follow the new Marx reading by arguing that critical theory is based on a critique of naturalized economic categories and a critique of a concept of labor as a trans-historically conceived activity (3). The consequence of this is that for Bonefeld critical theory is a critique of capitalist society as constituted by historically specific economic categories that find their central mechanism in its antagonistic character: capitalist wealth manifests a definite conceptuality of labour (41). Emphasizing both social form and class struggle, Bonefeld remains close to the later Adorno, particularly to his writings of the 1960s, when Adorno rediscovered Marxian-inspired theorizing and political economy. 2 One of the central points in this new attempt to revise critical theory is the thesis that most economic theories are misguided, distorted or failed abstractions because they do not have a proper idea of what they are about, i.e., the object of their theories is unclear. As Bonefeld puts it, economic science is haunted by its inability to define its subject matter (25). This point, made early on by Backhaus, but also made by Althusser, shifts the entire Marxist theory onto a new level and overcomes what Bonefeld (with Heinrich) calls worldview Marxism (35). As a consequence, political economy as a theory of the social constitution of economic categories (21) tries to connect spheres that in standard theories are treated separately, such as economy, politics, the state, etc. Here, Bonefeld argues that critical theory reflects on economic categories as social categories and shows that ultimately they are one and the same. Accordingly, the object of economic theory that conceives of itself as a social theory, is social reality and not a separated economy that operates beyond, within, or above society. Critical theory, according to Bonefeld, is a theory about the manner in which society organizes its reproduction (21), i.e., about how society organizes its reproduction as a whole. Bonefeld s formulation presents critical theory as a critique of political economy that is neither a theory of reproduction nor a theory of productive relations alone; rather, it is a theory of the organization of these relations. In this way, Bonefeld treats Marxist theory as a theory that denounces all naturalisms as ideology and that emphasizes social form and historical specificity. This re-visioning of critical theory as political economy and its most important categories is presented in ten chapters within which the author first develops his concept of critical theory as a theory of social constitution. 2. For this, see the superb overview by Dirk Braunstein, Adornos Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Bielefeld: Transcript: Bielefeld, 2011); and Alex Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle. Die Entwicklung der Kritischen Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1999). For a more speculative version of many of the concepts used in this text, see the impressive book by Frank Engster, Das Geld als Mass, Mittel und Methode. Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag, 2014).

3 Bonefeld on Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy 339 He then proceeds, second, with reflections on class, class struggle, and the concept of abstract labor. In a third step, Bonefeld introduces wide ranging reflections on the state and the role of law in capitalist societies, before he ending his book with what he takes to be the primary ideology of the system, namely, anti-semitism. Although this idea may be surprising, Bonefeld follows here insights from Postone and Adorno/Horkheimer. Though the author introduces his conception of critical theory well and situates his reflections nicely within the scholarship developed in the last three decades, the ten chapters remain only loosely connected, The reason for this may be a lack of philosophical reflection about how the categories that Bonefeld uses, such as abstract labor, abstract time, class, state, and world market, are linked to each other. This is a problem that has haunted most recent Marxian scholarship, which moves back and forth between a sociological take on social categories and a Hegelian attempt to deduce systematically the order and coherence of these categories. As a consequence, most chapters are new interpretations of key Marxian concepts, which are presented without reflections on why we need these and not other concepts. Nevertheless, Bonefeld s theoretical view is carefully worked out and his expositions are clear. Furthermore, though Bonefeld does not endorse a simple empiricist view of society, he does not follow the strong view that separates logic and history either. Instead, he argues that dialectics articulates the real life-activity of the capitalist social forms as the definite social practice of active humanity (68), which leads him to endorse a kind of hermeneutic theory of the concepts that he uses as ways of articulating social relations. In order to understand the historically specific organization of social relations, Bonefeld introduces a concept of conceptualization with which he tries to navigate the pitfalls of positivism and metaphysics. As Bonefeld puts it, in order to understand things, one has to be within them (58), i.e., conceptualization, one might say, must be wrested from the phenomena, an idea that also guides Adorno s position in his Negative Dialectics. The goal, overall, is deciphering the entire system of economic mystification as a socially constituted real abstraction (39). The author roughly follows Marx s six-book plan for Capital, which includes reflections on concepts that are less considered in recent Marxist scholarship, such as the state and the law (Poulantzas, Jessop, Hirsch, Holloway, Smith). The author s considerations are based on two points: first, he argues that the state has no autonomy and should be understood as a social configuration entirely: the political world is the social world in political form (166). Against Cox theory of the world market, Bonefeld claims that the state... is the political form of the capitalist social relations (160). In every instance the state expresses capitalist social relations and functions as a super-agent who, on the basis of the rule of law and by means of the force

4 340 Christian Lotz of law making violence (160), keeps the social antagonism in check. 3 As a consequence, the state transforms rebellious proletarians into self-responsible entrepreneurs of labor power (175). Moreover, it depoliticizes social relations (176), and secures itself as the presupposition of a depoliticized society (180). Second, Bonefeld argues that the law functions as an instrument of violence and as a disciplining instrument: the system of justice is dependent upon a moral code that commits individuals to the rules of justice, and therewith to the laws of private property (170). In a Foucauldian move, Bonefeld pays much attention to the role of the police by reconstructing the contemporary relevance of Adam Smith s theory of the liberal state (170 74) and by showing that the capitalist state is constituted by the class antagonism and the protection of class based interest. In contrast to popular opinion, but following the general materialist theories of law and state, the author shows that the system of neoliberalism is not based on a weaker but a stronger state. At times Bonefeld fails to keep his theoretical promise in these discussions, for example, by his tendency to fall back onto what Adorno would have called the danger of reified thought. Notions such as the state and the world market remain empty if they are treated as quasi-separate entities. This tendency to reify his main categories is visible in Bonefeld s lack of reflection on the dynamics and communicative dimension of political relations, such as international law, democratic rights, participatory struggles, and political discussions brought about by scale theorists. In the end, for Bonefeld, every modern political form is simply the backside of the capitalist social relations. He thereby falls back onto an insufficient view of capitalism that tends to overlook its contradictory tendencies. As the author states himself, capitalist totality is a negative totality (7) and, hence, we should also look at the political form of capitalist social relations as a contradictory unity. Consequently, if capitalism is indeed a negative totality we must find transcending views within existing political forms, i.e., within the existing state(s) and the law. Seen from Bonefeld s position, the difference between the political and the social are eliminated (as otherwise it could not be conceived as the political form of existing relations). This would lead, for example, to the highly doubtful view that there is virtually no difference between a contemporary totalitarian state and a neoliberal state since both are forms of the state. In particular, the normative and rational dimension of law is not mentioned once in the entire analysis and, as with other materialists who have dealt with the role of law in recent decades, Bonefeld seems to follow in the footsteps of legal positivism, if not legal nihilism, and 3. Unfortunately, Bonefeld does not take into account the superb book by Sonja Buckel, Subjektivierung und Kohäsion. Zur Rekonstruktion einer materialistischen Theorie des Rechts (Weilerswist: Vellbrueck 2007).

5 Bonefeld on Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy 341 tends to reduce the rational core of the democratic Rechtsstaat simply to an oppressive instrument of the state. Although I agree with Bonefeld (and with Althusser and Foucault) that the law cannot be understood without its founding violence, its class based foundation, and its physical disciplining, the exclusion of any normative aspect and of any considerations of rationality and justice is philosophically insufficient. I do not think that we can simply treat all legal advances of the twentieth century as liberal (capitalist) ideology. Following recent traditions and against classical and dogmatic readings of Marx, Bonefeld argues that commodity fetishism is not something external to the constitution of capitalist society, but instead is an objective feature of the social relations themselves. The turned-around structure, i.e., the topsy-turvy world, is a feature of this world: The circumstance that definite social relations assume the form of a relationship between things, and thus subsist in and through a world of things, has nothing to do with the things themselves. It has to do with peculiar the character of the social relations that assume the form of things (37). Following Harvey and de Angelis, Bonefeld argues that the value form cannot be understood without accumulation by dispossession and primitive accumulation (80). It belongs to the conceptuality of capital (81), i.e., it is a necessary moment of capital and its historical reproduction: primitive accumulation is a permanent accumulation (85). Consequently, Bonefeld argues against the new Marx reading by claiming that the class relation cannot be eradicated from a proper analysis of capitalist social relations. Bonefeld (to my mind correctly) understands the class relation as a relation of violence (95). As a consequence, contra Postone, Bonefeld argues that class is an objective category of capitalist social reproduction, and should not be confused with the sociological conception of social groups (103). Bonefeld argues that we should reject the view that the class division is something that is constituted on the basis of an independent capitalist (neutral) framework (105), i.e., an implicit positivist account of a neutral society as something given or presupposed. According to Bonefeld, the class antagonism is constitutive of all capitalist social relations. Although Bonefeld correctly rejects the idea that capitalist economic categories can be derived from an anthropological foundation (90), he smuggles an anthropological view in through the backdoor, by using a concept of authenticity. As he centrally puts it, society is fundamentally Man in her social relations (9). Social relations, however, are here understood as relations between persons (54), i.e., as intersubjective relations between individuals. Furthermore, sentences such as man in her social relations exists in the mode of being denied (69), lead to the idea that a post-capitalist and communist society will simply dispense with its capitalist shell and return to a non-distorted authentic human world without any abstractions.

6 342 Christian Lotz Bonefeld s strong dual thinking of either inauthentic abstractions or authentic concreteness seems to end up in the same problem as the early Marx, namely, operating with a concept of humanity in which humans would fully realize their human relationships once freed from the alienated world. One might ask, though, whether we would then live in a society in which social form and humanity collapse into one unity. It seems to me that this identity is based on a false concept of authenticity, since even a post-capitalist society must be based on a specific historical form. Otherwise, we fall back onto the abstraction that social relations can become one with human relations. Finally, Bonefeld refuses to work with any vision of a better society: critical theory, he claims, is entirely negative (221). One wonders, however, whether the author artificially suppresses his ethical impulses of a better society, which even a messianic conception of critique cannot avoid, by claiming that critical theory finds its positive resolution only in the classless society (222). The Benjaminian undertone of Bonefeld s position leads him to reject any concept of history, 4 although the assumption of a class struggle without conceiving it as a historical agent is difficult to imagine. For example, he calls the idea that history is a becoming of socialism, which he identifies as a Lukacsian idea, absurd (68). Of course, if we understand by teleology some kind of causal or rational mechanism in history, then we should reject this view (and Marx himself never held it). If, however, we follow Bonefeld and speak of a society in which we no longer are oppressed by the social abstractions that we reproduce in our lives, then we posit a goal that could be reached and for which class struggle stands. A classless society must be posited as a real possibility; otherwise, the entire conception does not make any sense, since speaking of a future that can be realized posits at least a minimal concept of history. Without at least acknowledging this minimal concept of history, every struggle for a non-capitalist future appears either as an illusion or as an irrational struggle without goal or telos. In sum, despite my critical remarks, Bonefeld s book is a superb reflection on central aspects of a contemporary version of critical theory that no longer looks down upon political economy. It represents the very best of contemporary critical theory in the Anglophone world, and its author gives us a renewed vision of Marxist thought. Everyone who works on contemporary critical theory should consult Bonefeld s book as a light in a tunnel whose end is not in sight. 4. History does not lead anywhere; it has no telos, no objectives, no purposes and it does not take sides (223).

The Transcendental Force of Money: Social Synthesis in Marx

The Transcendental Force of Money: Social Synthesis in Marx Rethinking Marxism, 2014 Vol. 26, No. 1, 130 139, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2014.857851 The Transcendental Force of Money: Social Synthesis in Marx Christian Lotz Instead of defining money as

More information

Is Capital a Thing? Remarks on Piketty s Concept of Capital

Is Capital a Thing? Remarks on Piketty s Concept of Capital 564090CRS0010.1177/0896920514564090Critical SociologyLotz research-article2014 Article Is Capital a Thing? Remarks on Piketty s Concept of Capital Critical Sociology 2015, Vol. 41(2) 375 383 The Author(s)

More information

By Rahel Jaeggi Suhrkamp, 2014, pbk 20, ISBN , 451pp. by Hans Arentshorst

By Rahel Jaeggi Suhrkamp, 2014, pbk 20, ISBN , 451pp. by Hans Arentshorst 271 Kritik von Lebensformen By Rahel Jaeggi Suhrkamp, 2014, pbk 20, ISBN 9783518295878, 451pp by Hans Arentshorst Does contemporary philosophy need to concern itself with the question of the good life?

More information

Subjectivity and its crisis: Commodity mediation and the economic constitution of objectivity and subjectivity

Subjectivity and its crisis: Commodity mediation and the economic constitution of objectivity and subjectivity Article Subjectivity and its crisis: Commodity mediation and the economic constitution of objectivity and subjectivity History of the Human Sciences 2016, Vol. 29(2) 77 95 ª The Author(s) 2016 Reprints

More information

The Return of Abstract Universalism: A Critique of David Graeber s Concept of Society and Communism. Christian Lotz

The Return of Abstract Universalism: A Critique of David Graeber s Concept of Society and Communism. Christian Lotz The Return of Abstract Universalism: A Critique of David Graeber s Concept of Society and Communism Christian Lotz Abstract: In this essay I critically examine David Graeber s concept of everyday communism.

More information

Critical Theory. Mark Olssen University of Surrey. Social Research at Frankfurt-am Main in The term critical theory was originally

Critical Theory. Mark Olssen University of Surrey. Social Research at Frankfurt-am Main in The term critical theory was originally Critical Theory Mark Olssen University of Surrey Critical theory emerged in Germany in the 1920s with the establishment of the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt-am Main in 1923. The term critical

More information

A Letter from Louis Althusser on Gramsci s Thought

A Letter from Louis Althusser on Gramsci s Thought Décalages Volume 2 Issue 1 Article 18 July 2016 A Letter from Louis Althusser on Gramsci s Thought Louis Althusser Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.oxy.edu/decalages Recommended Citation

More information

A discussion of Jean L. Cohen, Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory, (Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1982).

A discussion of Jean L. Cohen, Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory, (Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1982). 233 Review Essay JEAN COHEN ON MARXIAN CRITICAL THEORY A discussion of Jean L. Cohen, Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory, (Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1982). MOISHE

More information

The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again

The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again Chris O Kane John Jay, CUNY theresonlyonechrisokane@gmail.com There has been a

More information

Gender, the Family and 'The German Ideology'

Gender, the Family and 'The German Ideology' Gender, the Family and 'The German Ideology' Wed, 06/03/2009-21:18 Anonymous By Heather Tomanovsky The German Ideology (1845), often seen as the most materialistic of Marx s early writings, has been taken

More information

Aspects of Western Philosophy Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Aspects of Western Philosophy Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology, Madras Aspects of Western Philosophy Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology, Madras Module - 26 Lecture - 26 Karl Marx Historical Materialism

More information

Watcharabon Buddharaksa. The University of York. RCAPS Working Paper No January 2011

Watcharabon Buddharaksa. The University of York. RCAPS Working Paper No January 2011 Some methodological debates in Gramscian studies: A critical assessment Watcharabon Buddharaksa The University of York RCAPS Working Paper No. 10-5 January 2011 Ritsumeikan Center for Asia Pacific Studies

More information

What is Postmodernism? What is Postmodernism?

What is Postmodernism? What is Postmodernism? What is Postmodernism? Perhaps the clearest and most certain thing that can be said about postmodernism is that it is a very unclear and very much contested concept Richard Shusterman in Aesthetics and

More information

Sociology. Open Session on Answer Writing. (Session 2; Date: 7 July 2018) Topics. Paper I. 4. Sociological Thinkers (Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim)

Sociology. Open Session on Answer Writing. (Session 2; Date: 7 July 2018) Topics. Paper I. 4. Sociological Thinkers (Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim) Sociology Open Session on Answer Writing (Session 2; Date: 7 July 2018) Topics Paper I 4. Sociological Thinkers (Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim) Aditya Mongra @ Chrome IAS Academy Giving Wings To Your Dreams

More information

A Soviet View of Structuralism, Althusser, and Foucault

A Soviet View of Structuralism, Althusser, and Foucault A Soviet View of Structuralism, Althusser, and Foucault By V. E. Koslovskii Excerpts from the article Structuralizm I dialekticheskii materialism, Filosofskie Nauki, 1970, no. 1, pp. 177-182. This article

More information

INTRODUCTION. in Haug, Warenästhetik, Sexualität und Herrschaft. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Frankfurt: Fischer- Taschenbücherei, 1972).

INTRODUCTION. in Haug, Warenästhetik, Sexualität und Herrschaft. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Frankfurt: Fischer- Taschenbücherei, 1972). INTRODUCTION The Critique of Commodity Aesthetics is a contribution to the social analysis of the fate of sensuality and the development of needs within capitalism. It is a critique in so far as it represents

More information

Lecture 24 Sociology 621 December 12, 2005 MYSTIFICATION

Lecture 24 Sociology 621 December 12, 2005 MYSTIFICATION Lecture 24 Sociology 621 December 12, 2005 MYSTIFICATION In the next several sections we will follow up n more detail the distinction Thereborn made between three modes of interpellation: what is, what

More information

Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations of Capitalist Modernity

Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations of Capitalist Modernity CHAPTER 7 Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations of Capitalist Modernity Moishe Postone Critical Theory, the ensemble of approaches first developed during the interwar years by theorists of

More information

This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail.

This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. Author(s): Arentshorst, Hans Title: Book Review : Freedom s Right.

More information

Louis Althusser s Centrism

Louis Althusser s Centrism Louis Althusser s Centrism Anthony Thomson (1975) It is economism that identifies eternally in advance the determinatecontradiction-in-the last-instance with the role of the dominant contradiction, which

More information

In this chapter, I argue that Marx s labor theory value (a term Marx

In this chapter, I argue that Marx s labor theory value (a term Marx Chapter Marx contra Negri Value, Abstract Labor, and Money Christian Lotz Introduction In this chapter, I argue that Marx s labor theory value (a term Marx never used) cannot be reduced to the problem

More information

KONSTANTINOS KAVOULAKOS. University of Crete

KONSTANTINOS KAVOULAKOS. University of Crete KONSTANTINOS KAVOULAKOS University of Crete PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OR PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS? AXEL HONNETH AND ANDREW FEENBERG ON LUKACS THEORY OF REIFICATION xel Honneth s Reification. A New Look at

More information

Political Economy I, Fall 2014

Political Economy I, Fall 2014 Political Economy I, Fall 2014 Professor David Kotz Thompson 936 413-545-0739 dmkotz@econs.umass.edu Office Hours: Tuesdays 10 AM to 12 noon Information on Index Cards Your name Address Telephone Email

More information

t< k '" a.-j w~lp4t..

t< k ' a.-j w~lp4t.. t< k '" a.-j w~lp4t.. ~,.:,v:..s~ ~~ I\f'A.0....~V" ~ 0.. \ \ S'-c-., MATERIALIST FEMINISM A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives Edited by Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham ROUTLEDGE New

More information

INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL THEORY

INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL THEORY INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL THEORY Russell Keat + The critical theory of the Frankfurt School has exercised a major influence on debates within Marxism and the philosophy of science over the

More information

MARXISM AND EDUCATION

MARXISM AND EDUCATION MARXISM AND EDUCATION MARXISM AND EDUCATION This series assumes the ongoing relevance of Marx s contributions to critical social analysis and aims to encourage continuation of the development of the legacy

More information

Marx, Gender, and Human Emancipation

Marx, Gender, and Human Emancipation The U.S. Marxist-Humanists organization, grounded in Marx s Marxism and Raya Dunayevskaya s ideas, aims to develop a viable vision of a truly new human society that can give direction to today s many freedom

More information

Louis Althusser, What is Practice?

Louis Althusser, What is Practice? Louis Althusser, What is Practice? The word practice... indicates an active relationship with the real. Thus one says of a tool that it is very practical when it is particularly well adapted to a determinate

More information

Marx s Theory of Money. Tomás Rotta University of Greenwich, London, UK GPERC marx21.com

Marx s Theory of Money. Tomás Rotta University of Greenwich, London, UK GPERC marx21.com Marx s Theory of Money Tomás Rotta University of Greenwich, London, UK GPERC marx21.com May 2016 Marx s Theory of Money Lecture Plan 1. Introduction 2. Marxist terminology 3. Marx and Hegel 4. Marx s system

More information

Marxism and. Literature RAYMOND WILLIAMS. Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Marxism and. Literature RAYMOND WILLIAMS. Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Marxism and Literature RAYMOND WILLIAMS Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 134 Marxism and Literature which _have been precipitated and are more evidently and more immediately available. Not all art,

More information

Critical Political Economy of Communication and the Problem of Method

Critical Political Economy of Communication and the Problem of Method Critical Political Economy of Communication and the Problem of Method Brice Nixon University of La Verne, Communications Department, La Verne, USA, bln222@nyu.edu Abstract: This chapter argues that the

More information

Fetishism and Revolution in the Critique of Political Economy: Critical Reflections on some Contemporary Readings of Marx s Capital

Fetishism and Revolution in the Critique of Political Economy: Critical Reflections on some Contemporary Readings of Marx s Capital Volume 1 Issue 4: 150 years of Capital 365-398 ISSN: 2463-333X Fetishism and Revolution in the Critique of Political Economy: Critical Reflections on some Contemporary Readings of Marx s Capital Guido

More information

Affective economies of capitalism: Shifting the focus of the psychoanalytical debate. Yahya M. Madra.

Affective economies of capitalism: Shifting the focus of the psychoanalytical debate. Yahya M. Madra. Affective economies of capitalism: Shifting the focus of the psychoanalytical debate Yahya M. Madra Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst 1. My aim today

More information

Negative dialectics and the critique of economic objectivity

Negative dialectics and the critique of economic objectivity Article Negative dialectics and the critique of economic objectivity History of the Human Sciences 2016, Vol. 29(2) 60 76 ª The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav

More information

das kapital D9DFF09F8F77E6FAEC8C35880EC3024D Das Kapital 1 / 6

das kapital D9DFF09F8F77E6FAEC8C35880EC3024D Das Kapital 1 / 6 Das Kapital 1 / 6 2 / 6 3 / 6 Das Kapital Das Kapital, also known as Capital.Critique of Political Economy (German: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, pronounced [das kapiˈtaːl, kʁɪˈtiːk deːɐ

More information

Reification through Commodity Form or Technology? From Honneth back to Heidegger and Marx

Reification through Commodity Form or Technology? From Honneth back to Heidegger and Marx Rethinking Marxism, 2013 Vol. 25, No. 2, 184 200, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.769353 Reification through Commodity Form or Technology? From Honneth back to Heidegger and Marx Christian Lotz

More information

IX Colóquio Internacional Marx e Engels GT 4 - Economia e política

IX Colóquio Internacional Marx e Engels GT 4 - Economia e política IX Colóquio Internacional Marx e Engels GT 4 - Economia e política Anticipation and inevitability: reification and totalization of time in contemporary capitalism Ana Flavia Badue PhD student Anthropology

More information

1. Two very different yet related scholars

1. Two very different yet related scholars 1. Two very different yet related scholars Comparing the intellectual output of two scholars is always a hard effort because you have to deal with the complexity of a thought expressed in its specificity.

More information

MARXIST LITERARY CRITICISM. Literary Theories

MARXIST LITERARY CRITICISM. Literary Theories MARXIST LITERARY CRITICISM Literary Theories Session 4 Karl Marx (1818-1883) 1883) The son of a German Jewish Priest A philosopher, theorist, and historian The ultimate driving force was "historical materialism",

More information

Karl Korsch: To Make the Right Marx Visible through Hegel

Karl Korsch: To Make the Right Marx Visible through Hegel Karl Korsch: To Make the Right Marx Visible through Hegel Anders Bartonek In the following I will examine in what sense the Marxist thought of Karl Korsch (1886 1961) can be understood as a form of Hegelian

More information

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN AYRES AND WEBER S PERSPECTIVES. By Nuria Toledano and Crispen Karanda

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN AYRES AND WEBER S PERSPECTIVES. By Nuria Toledano and Crispen Karanda PhilosophyforBusiness Issue80 11thFebruary2017 http://www.isfp.co.uk/businesspathways/ THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ETHICS AND ECONOMICS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN AYRES AND WEBER S PERSPECTIVES By Nuria

More information

Levels of Analysis in Marxian Political Economy:

Levels of Analysis in Marxian Political Economy: Levels of Analysis in Marxian Political Economy: An Unoist Approach Robert Albritton Nearly every major thinker and school of thought within contemporary Marxian political economy has made some reference

More information

Marxism and Education. Series Editor Anthony Green Institute of Education University of London London, United Kingdom

Marxism and Education. Series Editor Anthony Green Institute of Education University of London London, United Kingdom Marxism and Education Series Editor Anthony Green Institute of Education University of London London, United Kingdom This series assumes the ongoing relevance of Marx s contributions to critical social

More information

Adorno s Critique of Heidegger in Why Still Philosophy (1962)

Adorno s Critique of Heidegger in Why Still Philosophy (1962) 1 Protocol Seminar Adorno and Heidegger September 23, 2010 Protocol, Graduate Seminar Adorno and Heidegger Class Session: 4 Date: September 23, 2010 Minute taker: Christian Lotz Topic: Adorno s critique

More information

Marxist Criticism. Critical Approach to Literature

Marxist Criticism. Critical Approach to Literature Marxist Criticism Critical Approach to Literature Marxism Marxism has a long and complicated history. It reaches back to the thinking of Karl Marx, a 19 th century German philosopher and economist. The

More information

Decolonizing Development Colonial Power and the Maya Edited by Joel Wainwright Copyright by Joel Wainwright. Conclusion

Decolonizing Development Colonial Power and the Maya Edited by Joel Wainwright Copyright by Joel Wainwright. Conclusion Decolonizing Development Colonial Power and the Maya Edited by Joel Wainwright Copyright 0 2008 by Joel Wainwright Conclusion However, we are not concerned here with the condition of the colonies. The

More information

The Meaning of Abstract and Concrete in Hegel and Marx

The Meaning of Abstract and Concrete in Hegel and Marx The Meaning of Abstract and Concrete in Hegel and Marx Andy Blunden, June 2018 The classic text which defines the meaning of abstract and concrete for Marx and Hegel is the passage known as The Method

More information

Chapter 2: Karl Marx Test Bank

Chapter 2: Karl Marx Test Bank Chapter 2: Karl Marx Test Bank Multiple-Choice Questions: 1. Which of the following is a class in capitalism according to Marx? a) Protestants b) Wage laborers c) Villagers d) All of the above 2. Marx

More information

SECTION I: MARX READINGS

SECTION I: MARX READINGS SECTION I: MARX READINGS part 1 Marx s Vision of History: Historical Materialism This part focuses on the broader conceptual framework, or overall view of history and human nature, that informed Marx

More information

The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics: From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard

The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics: From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard Front. Philos. China 2014, 9(2): 181 193 DOI 10.3868/s030-003-014-0016-8 SPECIAL THEME The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics: From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard Abstract

More information

Marx and Lukács: Reason and Revolution in the Philosophy of Praxis

Marx and Lukács: Reason and Revolution in the Philosophy of Praxis Marx and Lukács: Reason and Revolution in the Philosophy of Praxis Andrew Feenberg Table of Contents Preface 1. The Philosophy of Praxis 2. The Demands of Reason 3. Reification and Rationality 4. The Realization

More information

The Capitalist Unconscious Marx And Lacan

The Capitalist Unconscious Marx And Lacan The Capitalist Unconscious Marx And Lacan 1 / 6 2 / 6 3 / 6 The Capitalist Unconscious Marx And This paper studies how subjectivity in capitalist culture can be characterized. Building on Lacan's later

More information

Kent Academic Repository

Kent Academic Repository Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Milton, Damian (2007) Sociological Theory: Cultural Aspects of Marxist Theory and the Development of Neo-Marxism. N/A. (Unpublished)

More information

Was Marx an Ecologist?

Was Marx an Ecologist? Was Marx an Ecologist? Karl Marx has written voluminous texts related to capitalist political economy, and his work has been interpreted and utilised in a variety of ways. A key (although not commonly

More information

A New Reflection on the Innovative Content of Marxist Theory Based on the Background of Political Reform Juanhui Wei

A New Reflection on the Innovative Content of Marxist Theory Based on the Background of Political Reform Juanhui Wei 7th International Conference on Social Network, Communication and Education (SNCE 2017) A New Reflection on the Innovative Content of Marxist Theory Based on the Background of Political Reform Juanhui

More information

HOW SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND Marx s relation

HOW SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND Marx s relation 81 In this article the author argues that the dialectic of Hegel and the dialectic of Marx are the same. The mysticism that Marx and many Marxists have imputed to Hegel s dialectic is shown to be mistaken.

More information

The Research on Habermas' Communicative Action Theory

The Research on Habermas' Communicative Action Theory The Research on Habermas' Communicative Action Theory Guo Bing School of Marxism, China University of Political Science and Law No.25 Xitucheng Road, Beijing 100088, China. Abstract: Habermas' Communicative

More information

Culture in Social Theory

Culture in Social Theory Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology Volume 7 Issue 1 Article 8 6-19-2011 Culture in Social Theory Greg Beckett The University of Western Ontario Follow this and additional

More information

8. The dialectic of labor and time

8. The dialectic of labor and time 8. The dialectic of labor and time Marx in unfolding the category of capital, then, relates the historical dynamic of capitalist society as well as the industrial form of production to the structure of

More information

David S. Ferris is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

David S. Ferris is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin For students of modern criticism and theory, Walter Benjamin s writings have become essential reading. His analyses of photography, film, language, material

More information

Kęstas Kirtiklis Vilnius University Not by Communication Alone: The Importance of Epistemology in the Field of Communication Theory.

Kęstas Kirtiklis Vilnius University Not by Communication Alone: The Importance of Epistemology in the Field of Communication Theory. Kęstas Kirtiklis Vilnius University Not by Communication Alone: The Importance of Epistemology in the Field of Communication Theory Paper in progress It is often asserted that communication sciences experience

More information

Introduction. Critique of Commodity Aesthetics

Introduction. Critique of Commodity Aesthetics STUART HALL -- INTRODUCTION TO HAUG'S CRITIQUE OF COMMODITY AESTHETICS (1986) 1 Introduction to the Englisch Translation of Wolfgang Fritz Haug's Critique of Commodity Aesthetics (1986) by Stuart Hall

More information

Critical Theory for Research on Librarianship (RoL)

Critical Theory for Research on Librarianship (RoL) Critical Theory for Research on Librarianship (RoL) Indira Irawati Soemarto Luki-Wijayanti Nina Mayesti Paper presented in International Conference of Library, Archives, and Information Science (ICOLAIS)

More information

What counts as a convincing scientific argument? Are the standards for such evaluation

What counts as a convincing scientific argument? Are the standards for such evaluation Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas. By William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. Pp. 355. Cloth, $40. Paper, $20. Jeffrey Flynn Fordham University Published

More information

What do our appreciation of tonal music and tea roses, our acquisition of the concepts

What do our appreciation of tonal music and tea roses, our acquisition of the concepts Normativity and Purposiveness What do our appreciation of tonal music and tea roses, our acquisition of the concepts of a triangle and the colour green, and our cognition of birch trees and horseshoe crabs

More information

Researching and rebuilding a Marxian education theory: Back to the drawing board

Researching and rebuilding a Marxian education theory: Back to the drawing board Researching and rebuilding a Marxian education theory: Back to the drawing board Introduction This paper is based on the premise that the Marxist theories of education which have developed in English-speaking

More information

WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch Critical Theory Fuchs, Christian This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Fuchs, Christian (2016) Critical Theory.

More information

These are some notes to give you some idea of the content of the lecture they are not exhaustive, nor always accurate! So read the referenced work.

These are some notes to give you some idea of the content of the lecture they are not exhaustive, nor always accurate! So read the referenced work. Research Methods II: Lecture notes These are some notes to give you some idea of the content of the lecture they are not exhaustive, nor always accurate! So read the referenced work. Consider the approaches

More information

DIALECTICS OF ECONOMICAL BASE AND SOCIO-CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE: A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE

DIALECTICS OF ECONOMICAL BASE AND SOCIO-CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE: A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE DIALECTICS OF ECONOMICAL BASE AND SOCIO-CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE: A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE Prasanta Banerjee PhD Research Scholar, Department of Philosophy and Comparative Religion, Visva- Bharati University,

More information

The dialectics of the Abstract & the Concrete in Marx s Capital Chapter 3 Ascent from the Abstract to the Concrete

The dialectics of the Abstract & the Concrete in Marx s Capital Chapter 3 Ascent from the Abstract to the Concrete The dialectics of the Abstract & the Concrete in Marx s Capital Chapter 3 Ascent from the Abstract to the Concrete On the Formulation of the Question In analysing the method of political economy, Marx

More information

Self Criticism: Answer to Questions from Theoretical Practice

Self Criticism: Answer to Questions from Theoretical Practice Etienne Balibar Self Criticism: Answer to Questions from Theoretical Practice Theoretical Practice 7-8, 1973 pp. 56-72 Digital Reprints May 2002 Self Criticism: An Answer to Questions from Theoretical

More information

10/24/2016 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Lecture 4: Research Paradigms Paradigm is E- mail Mobile

10/24/2016 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Lecture 4: Research Paradigms Paradigm is E- mail Mobile Web: www.kailashkut.com RESEARCH METHODOLOGY E- mail srtiwari@ioe.edu.np Mobile 9851065633 Lecture 4: Research Paradigms Paradigm is What is Paradigm? Definition, Concept, the Paradigm Shift? Main Components

More information

Truth and Method in Unification Thought: A Preparatory Analysis

Truth and Method in Unification Thought: A Preparatory Analysis Truth and Method in Unification Thought: A Preparatory Analysis Keisuke Noda Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy Unification Theological Seminary New York, USA Abstract This essay gives a preparatory

More information

REVIEW ARTICLE IDEAL EMBODIMENT: KANT S THEORY OF SENSIBILITY

REVIEW ARTICLE IDEAL EMBODIMENT: KANT S THEORY OF SENSIBILITY Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 7, no. 2, 2011 REVIEW ARTICLE IDEAL EMBODIMENT: KANT S THEORY OF SENSIBILITY Karin de Boer Angelica Nuzzo, Ideal Embodiment: Kant

More information

Moishe Postone Critique and Historical Transformation

Moishe Postone Critique and Historical Transformation Moishe Postone Critique and Historical Transformation I In Time, Labor and Social Domination, I attempt to fundamentally rethink the core categories of Marx s critique of political economy as the basis

More information

Department of Philosophy Florida State University

Department of Philosophy Florida State University Department of Philosophy Florida State University Undergraduate Courses PHI 2010. Introduction to Philosophy (3). An introduction to some of the central problems in philosophy. Students will also learn

More information

The concept of capital and the determination of the general and uniform rates of profit: a reappraisal

The concept of capital and the determination of the general and uniform rates of profit: a reappraisal The concept of capital and the determination of the general and uniform rates of profit: a reappraisal Mario L. Robles Báez 1 Introduction In the critique of political economy literature, the concepts

More information

Review of Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Idealization XIII: Modeling in History

Review of Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Idealization XIII: Modeling in History Review Essay Review of Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Idealization XIII: Modeling in History Giacomo Borbone University of Catania In the 1970s there appeared the Idealizational Conception of Science (ICS) an alternative

More information

Theory or Theories? Based on: R.T. Craig (1999), Communication Theory as a field, Communication Theory, n. 2, May,

Theory or Theories? Based on: R.T. Craig (1999), Communication Theory as a field, Communication Theory, n. 2, May, Theory or Theories? Based on: R.T. Craig (1999), Communication Theory as a field, Communication Theory, n. 2, May, 119-161. 1 To begin. n Is it possible to identify a Theory of communication field? n There

More information

EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE EDITED BY ROBERT S. COHEN AND MARX W. WARTOFSKY VOLUME 71 EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

More information

A Fresh Look at Lukács: on Steven Vogel's Against Nature

A Fresh Look at Lukács: on Steven Vogel's Against Nature [Rethinking Marxism, Winter 1999, pp. 84-92.] A Fresh Look at Lukács: on Steven Vogel's Against Nature Andrew Feenberg Steven Vogel's book, Against Nature, lies at the intersection of three important fields:

More information

The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race

The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race Journal of critical Thought and Praxis Iowa state university digital press & School of education Volume 6 Issue 3 Everyday Practices of Social Justice Article 9 Book Review The Critical Turn in Education:

More information

Marx & Primitive Accumulation. Week Two Lectures

Marx & Primitive Accumulation. Week Two Lectures Marx & Primitive Accumulation Week Two Lectures Labour Power and the Circulation Process Before we get into Marxist Historiography (as well as who Marx even was), we are going to spend some time understanding

More information

Philosophical Background to 19 th Century Modernism

Philosophical Background to 19 th Century Modernism Philosophical Background to 19 th Century Modernism Early Modern Philosophy In the sixteenth century, European artists and philosophers, influenced by the rise of empirical science, faced a formidable

More information

Kent Academic Repository

Kent Academic Repository Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Sayers, Sean (1995) The Value of Community. Radical Philosophy (69). pp. 2-4. ISSN 0300-211X. DOI Link to record in KAR

More information

Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin and the Challenges of Film considered as Historical Research

Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin and the Challenges of Film considered as Historical Research Olaf Berg Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin and the Challenges of Film considered as Historical Research Lecture given at the Deleuze [n-1] Conference at the University of Cologne on July 1-3 2004. (Text

More information

The New School is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Research.

The New School is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Research. Necessity, Labor, and Time: A Reinterpretation of the Marxian Critique of Capitalism Author(s): MOISHE POSTONE Source: Social Research, Vol. 45, No. 4, Marx Today (WINTER 1978), pp. 739-788 Published by:

More information

Idealism and Pragmatism: Transcendent Validity Claims in Habermas s Democratic Theory

Idealism and Pragmatism: Transcendent Validity Claims in Habermas s Democratic Theory Res Cogitans Volume 4 Issue 1 Article 14 6-19-2013 Idealism and Pragmatism: Transcendent Validity Claims in Habermas s Democratic Theory Richard Van Barriger Portland State University Follow this and additional

More information

Narrating the Self: Parergonality, Closure and. by Holly Franking. hermeneutics focus attention on the transactional aspect of the aesthetic

Narrating the Self: Parergonality, Closure and. by Holly Franking. hermeneutics focus attention on the transactional aspect of the aesthetic Narrating the Self: Parergonality, Closure and by Holly Franking Many recent literary theories, such as deconstruction, reader-response, and hermeneutics focus attention on the transactional aspect of

More information

CONRAD AND IMPRESSIONISM JOHN G. PETERS

CONRAD AND IMPRESSIONISM JOHN G. PETERS CONRAD AND IMPRESSIONISM JOHN G. PETERS PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh

More information

A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy of Academic Labour

A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy of Academic Labour A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy of Academic Labour Prof. Richard Hall, De Montfort, rhall@dmu.ac.uk @hallymk1 Joss Winn, Lincoln, jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk @josswinn Academic Identities

More information

Significant Differences An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz

Significant Differences An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz Significant Differences An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz By the Editors of Interstitial Journal Elizabeth Grosz is a feminist scholar at Duke University. A former director of Monash University in Melbourne's

More information

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, 11 th Thesis on Feuerbach)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, 11 th Thesis on Feuerbach) Week 6: 27 October Marxist approaches to Culture Reading: Storey, Chapter 4: Marxisms The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx,

More information

Adorno - The Tragic End. By Dr. Ibrahim al-haidari *

Adorno - The Tragic End. By Dr. Ibrahim al-haidari * Adorno - The Tragic End. By Dr. Ibrahim al-haidari * Adorno was a critical philosopher but after returning from years in Exile in the United State he was then considered part of the establishment and was

More information

Lukács and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism Moishe Postone

Lukács and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism Moishe Postone Lukács and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism Moishe Postone The historical transformation in recent decades of advanced industrialized societies, the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Communism,

More information

REVIEW ARTICLE THE VALUE OF VALUE

REVIEW ARTICLE THE VALUE OF VALUE REVIEW ARTICLE THE VALUE OF VALUE REREADING CAPITAL By Ben Fine and Laurence Harris. Macmillan (London, 1979), 184 pp., 7.95 hb., 3.50 pb. By Simon Clarke. 'What we have we prize not to the worth Whiles

More information

Penultimate draft of a review which will appear in History and Philosophy of. $ ISBN: (hardback); ISBN:

Penultimate draft of a review which will appear in History and Philosophy of. $ ISBN: (hardback); ISBN: Penultimate draft of a review which will appear in History and Philosophy of Logic, DOI 10.1080/01445340.2016.1146202 PIERANNA GARAVASO and NICLA VASSALLO, Frege on Thinking and Its Epistemic Significance.

More information

Theory or Theories? Based on: R.T. Craig (1999), Communication Theory as a field, Communication Theory, n. 2, May,

Theory or Theories? Based on: R.T. Craig (1999), Communication Theory as a field, Communication Theory, n. 2, May, Theory or Theories? Based on: R.T. Craig (1999), Communication Theory as a field, Communication Theory, n. 2, May, 119-161. 1 To begin. n Is it possible to identify a Theory of communication field? n There

More information

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theory and Society.

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theory and Society. Rhetorical Affects and Critical Intentions: A Response to Ben Gregg Author(s): Seyla Benhabib Reviewed work(s): Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 153-158 Published by: Springer

More information

Necessity in Kant; Subjective and Objective

Necessity in Kant; Subjective and Objective Necessity in Kant; Subjective and Objective DAVID T. LARSON University of Kansas Kant suggests that his contribution to philosophy is analogous to the contribution of Copernicus to astronomy each involves

More information